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1Bison News
2----------
3
4* Changes in version 2.5.1 (????-??-??):
5
6** Minor improvements have been made to the manual.
7
8* Changes in version 2.5 (2011-05-14):
9
10** Grammar symbol names can now contain non-initial dashes:
11
12 Consistently with directives (such as %error-verbose) and with
13 %define variables (e.g. push-pull), grammar symbol names may contain
14 dashes in any position except the beginning. This is a GNU
15 extension over POSIX Yacc. Thus, use of this extension is reported
16 by -Wyacc and rejected in Yacc mode (--yacc).
17
18** Named references:
19
20 Historically, Yacc and Bison have supported positional references
21 ($n, $$) to allow access to symbol values from inside of semantic
22 actions code.
23
24 Starting from this version, Bison can also accept named references.
25 When no ambiguity is possible, original symbol names may be used
26 as named references:
27
28 if_stmt : "if" cond_expr "then" then_stmt ';'
29 { $if_stmt = mk_if_stmt($cond_expr, $then_stmt); }
30
31 In the more common case, explicit names may be declared:
32
33 stmt[res] : "if" expr[cond] "then" stmt[then] "else" stmt[else] ';'
34 { $res = mk_if_stmt($cond, $then, $else); }
35
36 Location information is also accessible using @name syntax. When
37 accessing symbol names containing dots or dashes, explicit bracketing
38 ($[sym.1]) must be used.
39
40 These features are experimental in this version. More user feedback
41 will help to stabilize them.
42
43** IELR(1) and canonical LR(1):
44
45 IELR(1) is a minimal LR(1) parser table generation algorithm. That
46 is, given any context-free grammar, IELR(1) generates parser tables
47 with the full language-recognition power of canonical LR(1) but with
48 nearly the same number of parser states as LALR(1). This reduction
49 in parser states is often an order of magnitude. More importantly,
50 because canonical LR(1)'s extra parser states may contain duplicate
51 conflicts in the case of non-LR(1) grammars, the number of conflicts
52 for IELR(1) is often an order of magnitude less as well. This can
53 significantly reduce the complexity of developing of a grammar.
54
55 Bison can now generate IELR(1) and canonical LR(1) parser tables in
56 place of its traditional LALR(1) parser tables, which remain the
57 default. You can specify the type of parser tables in the grammar
58 file with these directives:
59
60 %define lr.type lalr
61 %define lr.type ielr
62 %define lr.type canonical-lr
63
64 The default-reduction optimization in the parser tables can also be
65 adjusted using `%define lr.default-reductions'. For details on both
66 of these features, see the new section `Tuning LR' in the Bison
67 manual.
68
69 These features are experimental. More user feedback will help to
70 stabilize them.
71
72** LAC (Lookahead Correction) for syntax error handling:
73
74 Canonical LR, IELR, and LALR can suffer from a couple of problems
75 upon encountering a syntax error. First, the parser might perform
76 additional parser stack reductions before discovering the syntax
77 error. Such reductions can perform user semantic actions that are
78 unexpected because they are based on an invalid token, and they
79 cause error recovery to begin in a different syntactic context than
80 the one in which the invalid token was encountered. Second, when
81 verbose error messages are enabled (with %error-verbose or the
82 obsolete `#define YYERROR_VERBOSE'), the expected token list in the
83 syntax error message can both contain invalid tokens and omit valid
84 tokens.
85
86 The culprits for the above problems are %nonassoc, default
87 reductions in inconsistent states, and parser state merging. Thus,
88 IELR and LALR suffer the most. Canonical LR can suffer only if
89 %nonassoc is used or if default reductions are enabled for
90 inconsistent states.
91
92 LAC is a new mechanism within the parsing algorithm that solves
93 these problems for canonical LR, IELR, and LALR without sacrificing
94 %nonassoc, default reductions, or state merging. When LAC is in
95 use, canonical LR and IELR behave almost exactly the same for both
96 syntactically acceptable and syntactically unacceptable input.
97 While LALR still does not support the full language-recognition
98 power of canonical LR and IELR, LAC at least enables LALR's syntax
99 error handling to correctly reflect LALR's language-recognition
100 power.
101
102 Currently, LAC is only supported for deterministic parsers in C.
103 You can enable LAC with the following directive:
104
105 %define parse.lac full
106
107 See the new section `LAC' in the Bison manual for additional
108 details including a few caveats.
109
110 LAC is an experimental feature. More user feedback will help to
111 stabilize it.
112
113** %define improvements:
114
115*** Can now be invoked via the command line:
116
117 Each of these command-line options
118
119 -D NAME[=VALUE]
120 --define=NAME[=VALUE]
121
122 -F NAME[=VALUE]
123 --force-define=NAME[=VALUE]
124
125 is equivalent to this grammar file declaration
126
127 %define NAME ["VALUE"]
128
129 except that the manner in which Bison processes multiple definitions
130 for the same NAME differs. Most importantly, -F and --force-define
131 quietly override %define, but -D and --define do not. For further
132 details, see the section `Bison Options' in the Bison manual.
133
134*** Variables renamed:
135
136 The following %define variables
137
138 api.push_pull
139 lr.keep_unreachable_states
140
141 have been renamed to
142
143 api.push-pull
144 lr.keep-unreachable-states
145
146 The old names are now deprecated but will be maintained indefinitely
147 for backward compatibility.
148
149*** Values no longer need to be quoted in the grammar file:
150
151 If a %define value is an identifier, it no longer needs to be placed
152 within quotations marks. For example,
153
154 %define api.push-pull "push"
155
156 can be rewritten as
157
158 %define api.push-pull push
159
160*** Unrecognized variables are now errors not warnings.
161
162*** Multiple invocations for any variable is now an error not a warning.
163
164** Unrecognized %code qualifiers are now errors not warnings.
165
166** Character literals not of length one:
167
168 Previously, Bison quietly converted all character literals to length
169 one. For example, without warning, Bison interpreted the operators in
170 the following grammar to be the same token:
171
172 exp: exp '++'
173 | exp '+' exp
174 ;
175
176 Bison now warns when a character literal is not of length one. In
177 some future release, Bison will start reporting an error instead.
178
179** Destructor calls fixed for lookaheads altered in semantic actions:
180
181 Previously for deterministic parsers in C, if a user semantic action
182 altered yychar, the parser in some cases used the old yychar value to
183 determine which destructor to call for the lookahead upon a syntax
184 error or upon parser return. This bug has been fixed.
185
186** C++ parsers use YYRHSLOC:
187
188 Similarly to the C parsers, the C++ parsers now define the YYRHSLOC
189 macro and use it in the default YYLLOC_DEFAULT. You are encouraged
190 to use it. If, for instance, your location structure has `first'
191 and `last' members, instead of
192
193 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
194 do \
195 if (N) \
196 { \
197 (Current).first = (Rhs)[1].location.first; \
198 (Current).last = (Rhs)[N].location.last; \
199 } \
200 else \
201 { \
202 (Current).first = (Current).last = (Rhs)[0].location.last; \
203 } \
204 while (false)
205
206 use:
207
208 # define YYLLOC_DEFAULT(Current, Rhs, N) \
209 do \
210 if (N) \
211 { \
212 (Current).first = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 1).first; \
213 (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, N).last; \
214 } \
215 else \
216 { \
217 (Current).first = (Current).last = YYRHSLOC (Rhs, 0).last; \
218 } \
219 while (false)
220
221** YYLLOC_DEFAULT in C++:
222
223 The default implementation of YYLLOC_DEFAULT used to be issued in
224 the header file. It is now output in the implementation file, after
225 the user %code sections so that its #ifndef guard does not try to
226 override the user's YYLLOC_DEFAULT if provided.
227
228** YYFAIL now produces warnings and Java parsers no longer implement it:
229
230 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
231 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. More recently, it was
232 a documented feature of Bison's experimental Java parsers. As
233 promised in Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, any appearance of YYFAIL in a
234 semantic action now produces a deprecation warning, and Java parsers
235 no longer implement YYFAIL at all. For further details, including a
236 discussion of how to suppress C preprocessor warnings about YYFAIL
237 being unused, see the Bison 2.4.2 NEWS entry.
238
239** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action:
240
241 Previously, Bison appended a semicolon to every user action for
242 reductions when the output language defaulted to C (specifically, when
243 neither %yacc, %language, %skeleton, or equivalent command-line
244 options were specified). This allowed actions such as
245
246 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
247
248 instead of
249
250 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
251
252 As a first step in removing this misfeature, Bison now issues a
253 warning when it appends a semicolon. Moreover, in cases where Bison
254 cannot easily determine whether a semicolon is needed (for example, an
255 action ending with a cpp directive or a braced compound initializer),
256 it no longer appends one. Thus, the C compiler might now complain
257 about a missing semicolon where it did not before. Future releases of
258 Bison will cease to append semicolons entirely.
259
260** Verbose syntax error message fixes:
261
262 When %error-verbose or the obsolete `#define YYERROR_VERBOSE' is
263 specified, syntax error messages produced by the generated parser
264 include the unexpected token as well as a list of expected tokens.
265 The effect of %nonassoc on these verbose messages has been corrected
266 in two ways, but a more complete fix requires LAC, described above:
267
268*** When %nonassoc is used, there can exist parser states that accept no
269 tokens, and so the parser does not always require a lookahead token
270 in order to detect a syntax error. Because no unexpected token or
271 expected tokens can then be reported, the verbose syntax error
272 message described above is suppressed, and the parser instead
273 reports the simpler message, `syntax error'. Previously, this
274 suppression was sometimes erroneously triggered by %nonassoc when a
275 lookahead was actually required. Now verbose messages are
276 suppressed only when all previous lookaheads have already been
277 shifted or discarded.
278
279*** Previously, the list of expected tokens erroneously included tokens
280 that would actually induce a syntax error because conflicts for them
281 were resolved with %nonassoc in the current parser state. Such
282 tokens are now properly omitted from the list.
283
284*** Expected token lists are still often wrong due to state merging
285 (from LALR or IELR) and default reductions, which can both add
286 invalid tokens and subtract valid tokens. Canonical LR almost
287 completely fixes this problem by eliminating state merging and
288 default reductions. However, there is one minor problem left even
289 when using canonical LR and even after the fixes above. That is,
290 if the resolution of a conflict with %nonassoc appears in a later
291 parser state than the one at which some syntax error is
292 discovered, the conflicted token is still erroneously included in
293 the expected token list. Bison's new LAC implementation,
294 described above, eliminates this problem and the need for
295 canonical LR. However, LAC is still experimental and is disabled
296 by default.
297
298** Java skeleton fixes:
299
300*** A location handling bug has been fixed.
301
302*** The top element of each of the value stack and location stack is now
303 cleared when popped so that it can be garbage collected.
304
305*** Parser traces now print the top element of the stack.
306
307** -W/--warnings fixes:
308
309*** Bison now properly recognizes the `no-' versions of categories:
310
311 For example, given the following command line, Bison now enables all
312 warnings except warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
313
314 bison -Wall,no-yacc gram.y
315
316*** Bison now treats S/R and R/R conflicts like other warnings:
317
318 Previously, conflict reports were independent of Bison's normal
319 warning system. Now, Bison recognizes the warning categories
320 `conflicts-sr' and `conflicts-rr'. This change has important
321 consequences for the -W and --warnings command-line options. For
322 example:
323
324 bison -Wno-conflicts-sr gram.y # S/R conflicts not reported
325 bison -Wno-conflicts-rr gram.y # R/R conflicts not reported
326 bison -Wnone gram.y # no conflicts are reported
327 bison -Werror gram.y # any conflict is an error
328
329 However, as before, if the %expect or %expect-rr directive is
330 specified, an unexpected number of conflicts is an error, and an
331 expected number of conflicts is not reported, so -W and --warning
332 then have no effect on the conflict report.
333
334*** The `none' category no longer disables a preceding `error':
335
336 For example, for the following command line, Bison now reports
337 errors instead of warnings for incompatibilities with POSIX Yacc:
338
339 bison -Werror,none,yacc gram.y
340
341*** The `none' category now disables all Bison warnings:
342
343 Previously, the `none' category disabled only Bison warnings for
344 which there existed a specific -W/--warning category. However,
345 given the following command line, Bison is now guaranteed to
346 suppress all warnings:
347
348 bison -Wnone gram.y
349
350** Precedence directives can now assign token number 0:
351
352 Since Bison 2.3b, which restored the ability of precedence
353 directives to assign token numbers, doing so for token number 0 has
354 produced an assertion failure. For example:
355
356 %left END 0
357
358 This bug has been fixed.
359
360* Changes in version 2.4.3 (2010-08-05):
361
362** Bison now obeys -Werror and --warnings=error for warnings about
363 grammar rules that are useless in the parser due to conflicts.
364
365** Problems with spawning M4 on at least FreeBSD 8 and FreeBSD 9 have
366 been fixed.
367
368** Failures in the test suite for GCC 4.5 have been fixed.
369
370** Failures in the test suite for some versions of Sun Studio C++ have
371 been fixed.
372
373** Contrary to Bison 2.4.2's NEWS entry, it has been decided that
374 warnings about undefined %prec identifiers will not be converted to
375 errors in Bison 2.5. They will remain warnings, which should be
376 sufficient for POSIX while avoiding backward compatibility issues.
377
378** Minor documentation fixes.
379
380* Changes in version 2.4.2 (2010-03-20):
381
382** Some portability problems that resulted in failures and livelocks
383 in the test suite on some versions of at least Solaris, AIX, HP-UX,
384 RHEL4, and Tru64 have been addressed. As a result, fatal Bison
385 errors should no longer cause M4 to report a broken pipe on the
386 affected platforms.
387
388** `%prec IDENTIFIER' requires IDENTIFIER to be defined separately.
389
390 POSIX specifies that an error be reported for any identifier that does
391 not appear on the LHS of a grammar rule and that is not defined by
392 %token, %left, %right, or %nonassoc. Bison 2.3b and later lost this
393 error report for the case when an identifier appears only after a
394 %prec directive. It is now restored. However, for backward
395 compatibility with recent Bison releases, it is only a warning for
396 now. In Bison 2.5 and later, it will return to being an error.
397 [Between the 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 releases, it was decided that this
398 warning will not be converted to an error in Bison 2.5.]
399
400** Detection of GNU M4 1.4.6 or newer during configure is improved.
401
402** Warnings from gcc's -Wundef option about undefined YYENABLE_NLS,
403 YYLTYPE_IS_TRIVIAL, and __STRICT_ANSI__ in C/C++ parsers are now
404 avoided.
405
406** %code is now a permanent feature.
407
408 A traditional Yacc prologue directive is written in the form:
409
410 %{CODE%}
411
412 To provide a more flexible alternative, Bison 2.3b introduced the
413 %code directive with the following forms for C/C++:
414
415 %code {CODE}
416 %code requires {CODE}
417 %code provides {CODE}
418 %code top {CODE}
419
420 These forms are now considered permanent features of Bison. See the
421 %code entries in the section "Bison Declaration Summary" in the Bison
422 manual for a summary of their functionality. See the section
423 "Prologue Alternatives" for a detailed discussion including the
424 advantages of %code over the traditional Yacc prologue directive.
425
426 Bison's Java feature as a whole including its current usage of %code
427 is still considered experimental.
428
429** YYFAIL is deprecated and will eventually be removed.
430
431 YYFAIL has existed for many years as an undocumented feature of
432 deterministic parsers in C generated by Bison. Previously, it was
433 documented for Bison's experimental Java parsers. YYFAIL is no longer
434 documented for Java parsers and is formally deprecated in both cases.
435 Users are strongly encouraged to migrate to YYERROR, which is
436 specified by POSIX.
437
438 Like YYERROR, you can invoke YYFAIL from a semantic action in order to
439 induce a syntax error. The most obvious difference from YYERROR is
440 that YYFAIL will automatically invoke yyerror to report the syntax
441 error so that you don't have to. However, there are several other
442 subtle differences between YYERROR and YYFAIL, and YYFAIL suffers from
443 inherent flaws when %error-verbose or `#define YYERROR_VERBOSE' is
444 used. For a more detailed discussion, see:
445
446 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bison-patches/2009-12/msg00024.html
447
448 The upcoming Bison 2.5 will remove YYFAIL from Java parsers, but
449 deterministic parsers in C will continue to implement it. However,
450 because YYFAIL is already flawed, it seems futile to try to make new
451 Bison features compatible with it. Thus, during parser generation,
452 Bison 2.5 will produce a warning whenever it discovers YYFAIL in a
453 rule action. In a later release, YYFAIL will be disabled for
454 %error-verbose and `#define YYERROR_VERBOSE'. Eventually, YYFAIL will
455 be removed altogether.
456
457 There exists at least one case where Bison 2.5's YYFAIL warning will
458 be a false positive. Some projects add phony uses of YYFAIL and other
459 Bison-defined macros for the sole purpose of suppressing C
460 preprocessor warnings (from GCC cpp's -Wunused-macros, for example).
461 To avoid Bison's future warning, such YYFAIL uses can be moved to the
462 epilogue (that is, after the second `%%') in the Bison input file. In
463 this release (2.4.2), Bison already generates its own code to suppress
464 C preprocessor warnings for YYFAIL, so projects can remove their own
465 phony uses of YYFAIL if compatibility with Bison releases prior to
466 2.4.2 is not necessary.
467
468** Internationalization.
469
470 Fix a regression introduced in Bison 2.4: Under some circumstances,
471 message translations were not installed although supported by the
472 host system.
473
474* Changes in version 2.4.1 (2008-12-11):
475
476** In the GLR defines file, unexpanded M4 macros in the yylval and yylloc
477 declarations have been fixed.
478
479** Temporary hack for adding a semicolon to the user action.
480
481 Bison used to prepend a trailing semicolon at the end of the user
482 action for reductions. This allowed actions such as
483
484 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3 };
485
486 instead of
487
488 exp: exp "+" exp { $$ = $1 + $3; };
489
490 Some grammars still depend on this `feature'. Bison 2.4.1 restores
491 the previous behavior in the case of C output (specifically, when
492 neither %language or %skeleton or equivalent command-line options
493 are used) to leave more time for grammars depending on the old
494 behavior to be adjusted. Future releases of Bison will disable this
495 feature.
496
497** A few minor improvements to the Bison manual.
498
499* Changes in version 2.4 (2008-11-02):
500
501** %language is an experimental feature.
502
503 We first introduced this feature in test release 2.3b as a cleaner
504 alternative to %skeleton. Since then, we have discussed the possibility of
505 modifying its effect on Bison's output file names. Thus, in this release,
506 we consider %language to be an experimental feature that will likely evolve
507 in future releases.
508
509** Forward compatibility with GNU M4 has been improved.
510
511** Several bugs in the C++ skeleton and the experimental Java skeleton have been
512 fixed.
513
514* Changes in version 2.3b (2008-05-27):
515
516** The quotes around NAME that used to be required in the following directive
517 are now deprecated:
518
519 %define NAME "VALUE"
520
521** The directive `%pure-parser' is now deprecated in favor of:
522
523 %define api.pure
524
525 which has the same effect except that Bison is more careful to warn about
526 unreasonable usage in the latter case.
527
528** Push Parsing
529
530 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in C with a push interface. That
531 is, instead of invoking `yyparse', which pulls tokens from `yylex', you can
532 push one token at a time to the parser using `yypush_parse', which will
533 return to the caller after processing each token. By default, the push
534 interface is disabled. Either of the following directives will enable it:
535
536 %define api.push_pull "push" // Just push; does not require yylex.
537 %define api.push_pull "both" // Push and pull; requires yylex.
538
539 See the new section `A Push Parser' in the Bison manual for details.
540
541 The current push parsing interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
542 feedback will help to stabilize it.
543
544** The -g and --graph options now output graphs in Graphviz DOT format,
545 not VCG format. Like --graph, -g now also takes an optional FILE argument
546 and thus cannot be bundled with other short options.
547
548** Java
549
550 Bison can now generate an LALR(1) parser in Java. The skeleton is
551 `data/lalr1.java'. Consider using the new %language directive instead of
552 %skeleton to select it.
553
554 See the new section `Java Parsers' in the Bison manual for details.
555
556 The current Java interface is experimental and may evolve. More user
557 feedback will help to stabilize it.
558
559** %language
560
561 This new directive specifies the programming language of the generated
562 parser, which can be C (the default), C++, or Java. Besides the skeleton
563 that Bison uses, the directive affects the names of the generated files if
564 the grammar file's name ends in ".y".
565
566** XML Automaton Report
567
568 Bison can now generate an XML report of the LALR(1) automaton using the new
569 `--xml' option. The current XML schema is experimental and may evolve. More
570 user feedback will help to stabilize it.
571
572** The grammar file may now specify the name of the parser header file using
573 %defines. For example:
574
575 %defines "parser.h"
576
577** When reporting useless rules, useless nonterminals, and unused terminals,
578 Bison now employs the terms "useless in grammar" instead of "useless",
579 "useless in parser" instead of "never reduced", and "unused in grammar"
580 instead of "unused".
581
582** Unreachable State Removal
583
584 Previously, Bison sometimes generated parser tables containing unreachable
585 states. A state can become unreachable during conflict resolution if Bison
586 disables a shift action leading to it from a predecessor state. Bison now:
587
588 1. Removes unreachable states.
589
590 2. Does not report any conflicts that appeared in unreachable states.
591 WARNING: As a result, you may need to update %expect and %expect-rr
592 directives in existing grammar files.
593
594 3. For any rule used only in such states, Bison now reports the rule as
595 "useless in parser due to conflicts".
596
597 This feature can be disabled with the following directive:
598
599 %define lr.keep_unreachable_states
600
601 See the %define entry in the `Bison Declaration Summary' in the Bison manual
602 for further discussion.
603
604** Lookahead Set Correction in the `.output' Report
605
606 When instructed to generate a `.output' file including lookahead sets
607 (using `--report=lookahead', for example), Bison now prints each reduction's
608 lookahead set only next to the associated state's one item that (1) is
609 associated with the same rule as the reduction and (2) has its dot at the end
610 of its RHS. Previously, Bison also erroneously printed the lookahead set
611 next to all of the state's other items associated with the same rule. This
612 bug affected only the `.output' file and not the generated parser source
613 code.
614
615** --report-file=FILE is a new option to override the default `.output' file
616 name.
617
618** The `=' that used to be required in the following directives is now
619 deprecated:
620
621 %file-prefix "parser"
622 %name-prefix "c_"
623 %output "parser.c"
624
625** An Alternative to `%{...%}' -- `%code QUALIFIER {CODE}'
626
627 Bison 2.3a provided a new set of directives as a more flexible alternative to
628 the traditional Yacc prologue blocks. Those have now been consolidated into
629 a single %code directive with an optional qualifier field, which identifies
630 the purpose of the code and thus the location(s) where Bison should generate
631 it:
632
633 1. `%code {CODE}' replaces `%after-header {CODE}'
634 2. `%code requires {CODE}' replaces `%start-header {CODE}'
635 3. `%code provides {CODE}' replaces `%end-header {CODE}'
636 4. `%code top {CODE}' replaces `%before-header {CODE}'
637
638 See the %code entries in section `Bison Declaration Summary' in the Bison
639 manual for a summary of the new functionality. See the new section `Prologue
640 Alternatives' for a detailed discussion including the advantages of %code
641 over the traditional Yacc prologues.
642
643 The prologue alternatives are experimental. More user feedback will help to
644 determine whether they should become permanent features.
645
646** Revised warning: unset or unused mid-rule values
647
648 Since Bison 2.2, Bison has warned about mid-rule values that are set but not
649 used within any of the actions of the parent rule. For example, Bison warns
650 about unused $2 in:
651
652 exp: '1' { $$ = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $1 + $4; };
653
654 Now, Bison also warns about mid-rule values that are used but not set. For
655 example, Bison warns about unset $$ in the mid-rule action in:
656
657 exp: '1' { $1 = 1; } '+' exp { $$ = $2 + $4; };
658
659 However, Bison now disables both of these warnings by default since they
660 sometimes prove to be false alarms in existing grammars employing the Yacc
661 constructs $0 or $-N (where N is some positive integer).
662
663 To enable these warnings, specify the option `--warnings=midrule-values' or
664 `-W', which is a synonym for `--warnings=all'.
665
666** Default %destructor or %printer with `<*>' or `<>'
667
668 Bison now recognizes two separate kinds of default %destructor's and
669 %printer's:
670
671 1. Place `<*>' in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
672 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols for which you have formally
673 declared semantic type tags.
674
675 2. Place `<>' in a %destructor/%printer symbol list to define a default
676 %destructor/%printer for all grammar symbols without declared semantic
677 type tags.
678
679 Bison no longer supports the `%symbol-default' notation from Bison 2.3a.
680 `<*>' and `<>' combined achieve the same effect with one exception: Bison no
681 longer applies any %destructor to a mid-rule value if that mid-rule value is
682 not actually ever referenced using either $$ or $n in a semantic action.
683
684 The default %destructor's and %printer's are experimental. More user
685 feedback will help to determine whether they should become permanent
686 features.
687
688 See the section `Freeing Discarded Symbols' in the Bison manual for further
689 details.
690
691** %left, %right, and %nonassoc can now declare token numbers. This is required
692 by POSIX. However, see the end of section `Operator Precedence' in the Bison
693 manual for a caveat concerning the treatment of literal strings.
694
695** The nonfunctional --no-parser, -n, and %no-parser options have been
696 completely removed from Bison.
697
698* Changes in version 2.3a, 2006-09-13:
699
700** Instead of %union, you can define and use your own union type
701 YYSTYPE if your grammar contains at least one <type> tag.
702 Your YYSTYPE need not be a macro; it can be a typedef.
703 This change is for compatibility with other Yacc implementations,
704 and is required by POSIX.
705
706** Locations columns and lines start at 1.
707 In accordance with the GNU Coding Standards and Emacs.
708
709** You may now declare per-type and default %destructor's and %printer's:
710
711 For example:
712
713 %union { char *string; }
714 %token <string> STRING1
715 %token <string> STRING2
716 %type <string> string1
717 %type <string> string2
718 %union { char character; }
719 %token <character> CHR
720 %type <character> chr
721 %destructor { free ($$); } %symbol-default
722 %destructor { free ($$); printf ("%d", @$.first_line); } STRING1 string1
723 %destructor { } <character>
724
725 guarantees that, when the parser discards any user-defined symbol that has a
726 semantic type tag other than `<character>', it passes its semantic value to
727 `free'. However, when the parser discards a `STRING1' or a `string1', it
728 also prints its line number to `stdout'. It performs only the second
729 `%destructor' in this case, so it invokes `free' only once.
730
731 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the default
732 %destructor's and %printer's were experimental, and they were rewritten in
733 future versions.]
734
735** Except for LALR(1) parsers in C with POSIX Yacc emulation enabled (with `-y',
736 `--yacc', or `%yacc'), Bison no longer generates #define statements for
737 associating token numbers with token names. Removing the #define statements
738 helps to sanitize the global namespace during preprocessing, but POSIX Yacc
739 requires them. Bison still generates an enum for token names in all cases.
740
741** Handling of traditional Yacc prologue blocks is now more consistent but
742 potentially incompatible with previous releases of Bison.
743
744 As before, you declare prologue blocks in your grammar file with the
745 `%{ ... %}' syntax. To generate the pre-prologue, Bison concatenates all
746 prologue blocks that you've declared before the first %union. To generate
747 the post-prologue, Bison concatenates all prologue blocks that you've
748 declared after the first %union.
749
750 Previous releases of Bison inserted the pre-prologue into both the header
751 file and the code file in all cases except for LALR(1) parsers in C. In the
752 latter case, Bison inserted it only into the code file. For parsers in C++,
753 the point of insertion was before any token definitions (which associate
754 token numbers with names). For parsers in C, the point of insertion was
755 after the token definitions.
756
757 Now, Bison never inserts the pre-prologue into the header file. In the code
758 file, it always inserts it before the token definitions.
759
760** Bison now provides a more flexible alternative to the traditional Yacc
761 prologue blocks: %before-header, %start-header, %end-header, and
762 %after-header.
763
764 For example, the following declaration order in the grammar file reflects the
765 order in which Bison will output these code blocks. However, you are free to
766 declare these code blocks in your grammar file in whatever order is most
767 convenient for you:
768
769 %before-header {
770 /* Bison treats this block like a pre-prologue block: it inserts it into
771 * the code file before the contents of the header file. It does *not*
772 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to put
773 * #include's that you want at the top of your code file. A common
774 * example is `#include "system.h"'. */
775 }
776 %start-header {
777 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
778 * In both files, the point of insertion is before any Bison-generated
779 * token, semantic type, location type, and class definitions. This is a
780 * good place to define %union dependencies, for example. */
781 }
782 %union {
783 /* Unlike the traditional Yacc prologue blocks, the output order for the
784 * new %*-header blocks is not affected by their declaration position
785 * relative to any %union in the grammar file. */
786 }
787 %end-header {
788 /* Bison inserts this block into both the header file and the code file.
789 * In both files, the point of insertion is after the Bison-generated
790 * definitions. This is a good place to declare or define public
791 * functions or data structures that depend on the Bison-generated
792 * definitions. */
793 }
794 %after-header {
795 /* Bison treats this block like a post-prologue block: it inserts it into
796 * the code file after the contents of the header file. It does *not*
797 * insert it into the header file. This is a good place to declare or
798 * define internal functions or data structures that depend on the
799 * Bison-generated definitions. */
800 }
801
802 If you have multiple occurrences of any one of the above declarations, Bison
803 will concatenate the contents in declaration order.
804
805 [Although we failed to mention this here in the 2.3a release, the prologue
806 alternatives were experimental, and they were rewritten in future versions.]
807
808** The option `--report=look-ahead' has been changed to `--report=lookahead'.
809 The old spelling still works, but is not documented and may be removed
810 in a future release.
811
812* Changes in version 2.3, 2006-06-05:
813
814** GLR grammars should now use `YYRECOVERING ()' instead of `YYRECOVERING',
815 for compatibility with LALR(1) grammars.
816
817** It is now documented that any definition of YYSTYPE or YYLTYPE should
818 be to a type name that does not contain parentheses or brackets.
819
820* Changes in version 2.2, 2006-05-19:
821
822** The distribution terms for all Bison-generated parsers now permit
823 using the parsers in nonfree programs. Previously, this permission
824 was granted only for Bison-generated LALR(1) parsers in C.
825
826** %name-prefix changes the namespace name in C++ outputs.
827
828** The C++ parsers export their token_type.
829
830** Bison now allows multiple %union declarations, and concatenates
831 their contents together.
832
833** New warning: unused values
834 Right-hand side symbols whose values are not used are reported,
835 if the symbols have destructors. For instance:
836
837 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; }
838 | exp "+" exp
839 ;
840
841 will trigger a warning about $$ and $5 in the first rule, and $3 in
842 the second ($1 is copied to $$ by the default rule). This example
843 most likely contains three errors, and could be rewritten as:
844
845 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp
846 { $$ = $1 ? $3 : $5; free ($1 ? $5 : $3); free ($1); }
847 | exp "+" exp
848 { $$ = $1 ? $1 : $3; if ($1) free ($3); }
849 ;
850
851 However, if the original actions were really intended, memory leaks
852 and all, the warnings can be suppressed by letting Bison believe the
853 values are used, e.g.:
854
855 exp: exp "?" exp ":" exp { $1 ? $1 : $3; (void) ($$, $5); }
856 | exp "+" exp { $$ = $1; (void) $3; }
857 ;
858
859 If there are mid-rule actions, the warning is issued if no action
860 uses it. The following triggers no warning: $1 and $3 are used.
861
862 exp: exp { push ($1); } '+' exp { push ($3); sum (); };
863
864 The warning is intended to help catching lost values and memory leaks.
865 If a value is ignored, its associated memory typically is not reclaimed.
866
867** %destructor vs. YYABORT, YYACCEPT, and YYERROR.
868 Destructors are now called when user code invokes YYABORT, YYACCEPT,
869 and YYERROR, for all objects on the stack, other than objects
870 corresponding to the right-hand side of the current rule.
871
872** %expect, %expect-rr
873 Incorrect numbers of expected conflicts are now actual errors,
874 instead of warnings.
875
876** GLR, YACC parsers.
877 The %parse-params are available in the destructors (and the
878 experimental printers) as per the documentation.
879
880** Bison now warns if it finds a stray `$' or `@' in an action.
881
882** %require "VERSION"
883 This specifies that the grammar file depends on features implemented
884 in Bison version VERSION or higher.
885
886** lalr1.cc: The token and value types are now class members.
887 The tokens were defined as free form enums and cpp macros. YYSTYPE
888 was defined as a free form union. They are now class members:
889 tokens are enumerations of the `yy::parser::token' struct, and the
890 semantic values have the `yy::parser::semantic_type' type.
891
892 If you do not want or can update to this scheme, the directive
893 `%define "global_tokens_and_yystype" "1"' triggers the global
894 definition of tokens and YYSTYPE. This change is suitable both
895 for previous releases of Bison, and this one.
896
897 If you wish to update, then make sure older version of Bison will
898 fail using `%require "2.2"'.
899
900** DJGPP support added.
901\f
902* Changes in version 2.1, 2005-09-16:
903
904** The C++ lalr1.cc skeleton supports %lex-param.
905
906** Bison-generated parsers now support the translation of diagnostics like
907 "syntax error" into languages other than English. The default
908 language is still English. For details, please see the new
909 Internationalization section of the Bison manual. Software
910 distributors should also see the new PACKAGING file. Thanks to
911 Bruno Haible for this new feature.
912
913** Wording in the Bison-generated parsers has been changed slightly to
914 simplify translation. In particular, the message "memory exhausted"
915 has replaced "parser stack overflow", as the old message was not
916 always accurate for modern Bison-generated parsers.
917
918** Destructors are now called when the parser aborts, for all symbols left
919 behind on the stack. Also, the start symbol is now destroyed after a
920 successful parse. In both cases, the behavior was formerly inconsistent.
921
922** When generating verbose diagnostics, Bison-generated parsers no longer
923 quote the literal strings associated with tokens. For example, for
924 a syntax error associated with '%token NUM "number"' they might
925 print 'syntax error, unexpected number' instead of 'syntax error,
926 unexpected "number"'.
927\f
928* Changes in version 2.0, 2004-12-25:
929
930** Possibly-incompatible changes
931
932 - Bison-generated parsers no longer default to using the alloca function
933 (when available) to extend the parser stack, due to widespread
934 problems in unchecked stack-overflow detection. You can "#define
935 YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA 1" to require the use of alloca, but please read
936 the manual to determine safe values for YYMAXDEPTH in that case.
937
938 - Error token location.
939 During error recovery, the location of the syntax error is updated
940 to cover the whole sequence covered by the error token: it includes
941 the shifted symbols thrown away during the first part of the error
942 recovery, and the lookahead rejected during the second part.
943
944 - Semicolon changes:
945 . Stray semicolons are no longer allowed at the start of a grammar.
946 . Semicolons are now required after in-grammar declarations.
947
948 - Unescaped newlines are no longer allowed in character constants or
949 string literals. They were never portable, and GCC 3.4.0 has
950 dropped support for them. Better diagnostics are now generated if
951 forget a closing quote.
952
953 - NUL bytes are no longer allowed in Bison string literals, unfortunately.
954
955** New features
956
957 - GLR grammars now support locations.
958
959 - New directive: %initial-action.
960 This directive allows the user to run arbitrary code (including
961 initializing @$) from yyparse before parsing starts.
962
963 - A new directive "%expect-rr N" specifies the expected number of
964 reduce/reduce conflicts in GLR parsers.
965
966 - %token numbers can now be hexadecimal integers, e.g., `%token FOO 0x12d'.
967 This is a GNU extension.
968
969 - The option `--report=lookahead' was changed to `--report=look-ahead'.
970 [However, this was changed back after 2.3.]
971
972 - Experimental %destructor support has been added to lalr1.cc.
973
974 - New configure option --disable-yacc, to disable installation of the
975 yacc command and -ly library introduced in 1.875 for POSIX conformance.
976
977** Bug fixes
978
979 - For now, %expect-count violations are now just warnings, not errors.
980 This is for compatibility with Bison 1.75 and earlier (when there are
981 reduce/reduce conflicts) and with Bison 1.30 and earlier (when there
982 are too many or too few shift/reduce conflicts). However, in future
983 versions of Bison we plan to improve the %expect machinery so that
984 these violations will become errors again.
985
986 - Within Bison itself, numbers (e.g., goto numbers) are no longer
987 arbitrarily limited to 16-bit counts.
988
989 - Semicolons are now allowed before "|" in grammar rules, as POSIX requires.
990\f
991* Changes in version 1.875, 2003-01-01:
992
993** The documentation license has been upgraded to version 1.2
994 of the GNU Free Documentation License.
995
996** syntax error processing
997
998 - In Yacc-style parsers YYLLOC_DEFAULT is now used to compute error
999 locations too. This fixes bugs in error-location computation.
1000
1001 - %destructor
1002 It is now possible to reclaim the memory associated to symbols
1003 discarded during error recovery. This feature is still experimental.
1004
1005 - %error-verbose
1006 This new directive is preferred over YYERROR_VERBOSE.
1007
1008 - #defining yyerror to steal internal variables is discouraged.
1009 It is not guaranteed to work forever.
1010
1011** POSIX conformance
1012
1013 - Semicolons are once again optional at the end of grammar rules.
1014 This reverts to the behavior of Bison 1.33 and earlier, and improves
1015 compatibility with Yacc.
1016
1017 - `parse error' -> `syntax error'
1018 Bison now uniformly uses the term `syntax error'; formerly, the code
1019 and manual sometimes used the term `parse error' instead. POSIX
1020 requires `syntax error' in diagnostics, and it was thought better to
1021 be consistent.
1022
1023 - The documentation now emphasizes that yylex and yyerror must be
1024 declared before use. C99 requires this.
1025
1026 - Bison now parses C99 lexical constructs like UCNs and
1027 backslash-newline within C escape sequences, as POSIX 1003.1-2001 requires.
1028
1029 - File names are properly escaped in C output. E.g., foo\bar.y is
1030 output as "foo\\bar.y".
1031
1032 - Yacc command and library now available
1033 The Bison distribution now installs a `yacc' command, as POSIX requires.
1034 Also, Bison now installs a small library liby.a containing
1035 implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions.
1036 This library is normally not useful, but POSIX requires it.
1037
1038 - Type clashes now generate warnings, not errors.
1039
1040 - If the user does not define YYSTYPE as a macro, Bison now declares it
1041 using typedef instead of defining it as a macro.
1042 For consistency, YYLTYPE is also declared instead of defined.
1043
1044** Other compatibility issues
1045
1046 - %union directives can now have a tag before the `{', e.g., the
1047 directive `%union foo {...}' now generates the C code
1048 `typedef union foo { ... } YYSTYPE;'; this is for Yacc compatibility.
1049 The default union tag is `YYSTYPE', for compatibility with Solaris 9 Yacc.
1050 For consistency, YYLTYPE's struct tag is now `YYLTYPE' not `yyltype'.
1051 This is for compatibility with both Yacc and Bison 1.35.
1052
1053 - `;' is output before the terminating `}' of an action, for
1054 compatibility with Bison 1.35.
1055
1056 - Bison now uses a Yacc-style format for conflict reports, e.g.,
1057 `conflicts: 2 shift/reduce, 1 reduce/reduce'.
1058
1059 - `yystype' and `yyltype' are now obsolescent macros instead of being
1060 typedefs or tags; they are no longer documented and are planned to be
1061 withdrawn in a future release.
1062
1063** GLR parser notes
1064
1065 - GLR and inline
1066 Users of Bison have to decide how they handle the portability of the
1067 C keyword `inline'.
1068
1069 - `parsing stack overflow...' -> `parser stack overflow'
1070 GLR parsers now report `parser stack overflow' as per the Bison manual.
1071
1072** Bison now warns if it detects conflicting outputs to the same file,
1073 e.g., it generates a warning for `bison -d -o foo.h foo.y' since
1074 that command outputs both code and header to foo.h.
1075
1076** #line in output files
1077 - --no-line works properly.
1078
1079** Bison can no longer be built by a K&R C compiler; it requires C89 or
1080 later to be built. This change originally took place a few versions
1081 ago, but nobody noticed until we recently asked someone to try
1082 building Bison with a K&R C compiler.
1083\f
1084* Changes in version 1.75, 2002-10-14:
1085
1086** Bison should now work on 64-bit hosts.
1087
1088** Indonesian translation thanks to Tedi Heriyanto.
1089
1090** GLR parsers
1091 Fix spurious parse errors.
1092
1093** Pure parsers
1094 Some people redefine yyerror to steal yyparse' private variables.
1095 Reenable this trick until an official feature replaces it.
1096
1097** Type Clashes
1098 In agreement with POSIX and with other Yaccs, leaving a default
1099 action is valid when $$ is untyped, and $1 typed:
1100
1101 untyped: ... typed;
1102
1103 but the converse remains an error:
1104
1105 typed: ... untyped;
1106
1107** Values of mid-rule actions
1108 The following code:
1109
1110 foo: { ... } { $$ = $1; } ...
1111
1112 was incorrectly rejected: $1 is defined in the second mid-rule
1113 action, and is equal to the $$ of the first mid-rule action.
1114\f
1115* Changes in version 1.50, 2002-10-04:
1116
1117** GLR parsing
1118 The declaration
1119 %glr-parser
1120 causes Bison to produce a Generalized LR (GLR) parser, capable of handling
1121 almost any context-free grammar, ambiguous or not. The new declarations
1122 %dprec and %merge on grammar rules allow parse-time resolution of
1123 ambiguities. Contributed by Paul Hilfinger.
1124
1125 Unfortunately Bison 1.50 does not work properly on 64-bit hosts
1126 like the Alpha, so please stick to 32-bit hosts for now.
1127
1128** Output Directory
1129 When not in Yacc compatibility mode, when the output file was not
1130 specified, running `bison foo/bar.y' created `foo/bar.c'. It
1131 now creates `bar.c'.
1132
1133** Undefined token
1134 The undefined token was systematically mapped to 2 which prevented
1135 the use of 2 by the user. This is no longer the case.
1136
1137** Unknown token numbers
1138 If yylex returned an out of range value, yyparse could die. This is
1139 no longer the case.
1140
1141** Error token
1142 According to POSIX, the error token must be 256.
1143 Bison extends this requirement by making it a preference: *if* the
1144 user specified that one of her tokens is numbered 256, then error
1145 will be mapped onto another number.
1146
1147** Verbose error messages
1148 They no longer report `..., expecting error or...' for states where
1149 error recovery is possible.
1150
1151** End token
1152 Defaults to `$end' instead of `$'.
1153
1154** Error recovery now conforms to documentation and to POSIX
1155 When a Bison-generated parser encounters a syntax error, it now pops
1156 the stack until it finds a state that allows shifting the error
1157 token. Formerly, it popped the stack until it found a state that
1158 allowed some non-error action other than a default reduction on the
1159 error token. The new behavior has long been the documented behavior,
1160 and has long been required by POSIX. For more details, please see
1161 Paul Eggert, "Reductions during Bison error handling" (2002-05-20)
1162 <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2002-05/msg00038.html>.
1163
1164** Traces
1165 Popped tokens and nonterminals are now reported.
1166
1167** Larger grammars
1168 Larger grammars are now supported (larger token numbers, larger grammar
1169 size (= sum of the LHS and RHS lengths), larger LALR tables).
1170 Formerly, many of these numbers ran afoul of 16-bit limits;
1171 now these limits are 32 bits on most hosts.
1172
1173** Explicit initial rule
1174 Bison used to play hacks with the initial rule, which the user does
1175 not write. It is now explicit, and visible in the reports and
1176 graphs as rule 0.
1177
1178** Useless rules
1179 Before, Bison reported the useless rules, but, although not used,
1180 included them in the parsers. They are now actually removed.
1181
1182** Useless rules, useless nonterminals
1183 They are now reported, as a warning, with their locations.
1184
1185** Rules never reduced
1186 Rules that can never be reduced because of conflicts are now
1187 reported.
1188
1189** Incorrect `Token not used'
1190 On a grammar such as
1191
1192 %token useless useful
1193 %%
1194 exp: '0' %prec useful;
1195
1196 where a token was used to set the precedence of the last rule,
1197 bison reported both `useful' and `useless' as useless tokens.
1198
1199** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31
1200 as they caused too many portability hassles.
1201
1202** Default locations
1203 By an accident of design, the default computation of @$ was
1204 performed after another default computation was performed: @$ = @1.
1205 The latter is now removed: YYLLOC_DEFAULT is fully responsible of
1206 the computation of @$.
1207
1208** Token end-of-file
1209 The token end of file may be specified by the user, in which case,
1210 the user symbol is used in the reports, the graphs, and the verbose
1211 error messages instead of `$end', which remains being the default.
1212 For instance
1213 %token MYEOF 0
1214 or
1215 %token MYEOF 0 "end of file"
1216
1217** Semantic parser
1218 This old option, which has been broken for ages, is removed.
1219
1220** New translations
1221 Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Alexandre Folle de Menezes.
1222 Croatian, thanks to Denis Lackovic.
1223
1224** Incorrect token definitions
1225 When given `%token 'a' "A"', Bison used to output `#define 'a' 65'.
1226
1227** Token definitions as enums
1228 Tokens are output both as the traditional #define's, and, provided
1229 the compiler supports ANSI C or is a C++ compiler, as enums.
1230 This lets debuggers display names instead of integers.
1231
1232** Reports
1233 In addition to --verbose, bison supports --report=THINGS, which
1234 produces additional information:
1235 - itemset
1236 complete the core item sets with their closure
1237 - lookahead [changed to `look-ahead' in 1.875e through 2.3, but changed back]
1238 explicitly associate lookahead tokens to items
1239 - solved
1240 describe shift/reduce conflicts solving.
1241 Bison used to systematically output this information on top of
1242 the report. Solved conflicts are now attached to their states.
1243
1244** Type clashes
1245 Previous versions don't complain when there is a type clash on
1246 the default action if the rule has a mid-rule action, such as in:
1247
1248 %type <foo> bar
1249 %%
1250 bar: '0' {} '0';
1251
1252 This is fixed.
1253
1254** GNU M4 is now required when using Bison.
1255\f
1256* Changes in version 1.35, 2002-03-25:
1257
1258** C Skeleton
1259 Some projects use Bison's C parser with C++ compilers, and define
1260 YYSTYPE as a class. The recent adjustment of C parsers for data
1261 alignment and 64 bit architectures made this impossible.
1262
1263 Because for the time being no real solution for C++ parser
1264 generation exists, kludges were implemented in the parser to
1265 maintain this use. In the future, when Bison has C++ parsers, this
1266 kludge will be disabled.
1267
1268 This kludge also addresses some C++ problems when the stack was
1269 extended.
1270\f
1271* Changes in version 1.34, 2002-03-12:
1272
1273** File name clashes are detected
1274 $ bison foo.y -d -o foo.x
1275 fatal error: header and parser would both be named `foo.x'
1276
1277** A missing `;' at the end of a rule triggers a warning
1278 In accordance with POSIX, and in agreement with other
1279 Yacc implementations, Bison will mandate this semicolon in the near
1280 future. This eases the implementation of a Bison parser of Bison
1281 grammars by making this grammar LALR(1) instead of LR(2). To
1282 facilitate the transition, this release introduces a warning.
1283
1284** Revert the C++ namespace changes introduced in 1.31, as they caused too
1285 many portability hassles.
1286
1287** DJGPP support added.
1288
1289** Fix test suite portability problems.
1290\f
1291* Changes in version 1.33, 2002-02-07:
1292
1293** Fix C++ issues
1294 Groff could not be compiled for the definition of size_t was lacking
1295 under some conditions.
1296
1297** Catch invalid @n
1298 As is done with $n.
1299\f
1300* Changes in version 1.32, 2002-01-23:
1301
1302** Fix Yacc output file names
1303
1304** Portability fixes
1305
1306** Italian, Dutch translations
1307\f
1308* Changes in version 1.31, 2002-01-14:
1309
1310** Many Bug Fixes
1311
1312** GNU Gettext and %expect
1313 GNU Gettext asserts 10 s/r conflicts, but there are 7. Now that
1314 Bison dies on incorrect %expectations, we fear there will be
1315 too many bug reports for Gettext, so _for the time being_, %expect
1316 does not trigger an error when the input file is named `plural.y'.
1317
1318** Use of alloca in parsers
1319 If YYSTACK_USE_ALLOCA is defined to 0, then the parsers will use
1320 malloc exclusively. Since 1.29, but was not NEWS'ed.
1321
1322 alloca is used only when compiled with GCC, to avoid portability
1323 problems as on AIX.
1324
1325** yyparse now returns 2 if memory is exhausted; formerly it dumped core.
1326
1327** When the generated parser lacks debugging code, YYDEBUG is now 0
1328 (as POSIX requires) instead of being undefined.
1329
1330** User Actions
1331 Bison has always permitted actions such as { $$ = $1 }: it adds the
1332 ending semicolon. Now if in Yacc compatibility mode, the semicolon
1333 is no longer output: one has to write { $$ = $1; }.
1334
1335** Better C++ compliance
1336 The output parsers try to respect C++ namespaces.
1337 [This turned out to be a failed experiment, and it was reverted later.]
1338
1339** Reduced Grammars
1340 Fixed bugs when reporting useless nonterminals.
1341
1342** 64 bit hosts
1343 The parsers work properly on 64 bit hosts.
1344
1345** Error messages
1346 Some calls to strerror resulted in scrambled or missing error messages.
1347
1348** %expect
1349 When the number of shift/reduce conflicts is correct, don't issue
1350 any warning.
1351
1352** The verbose report includes the rule line numbers.
1353
1354** Rule line numbers are fixed in traces.
1355
1356** Swedish translation
1357
1358** Parse errors
1359 Verbose parse error messages from the parsers are better looking.
1360 Before: parse error: unexpected `'/'', expecting `"number"' or `'-'' or `'(''
1361 Now: parse error: unexpected '/', expecting "number" or '-' or '('
1362
1363** Fixed parser memory leaks.
1364 When the generated parser was using malloc to extend its stacks, the
1365 previous allocations were not freed.
1366
1367** Fixed verbose output file.
1368 Some newlines were missing.
1369 Some conflicts in state descriptions were missing.
1370
1371** Fixed conflict report.
1372 Option -v was needed to get the result.
1373
1374** %expect
1375 Was not used.
1376 Mismatches are errors, not warnings.
1377
1378** Fixed incorrect processing of some invalid input.
1379
1380** Fixed CPP guards: 9foo.h uses BISON_9FOO_H instead of 9FOO_H.
1381
1382** Fixed some typos in the documentation.
1383
1384** %token MY_EOF 0 is supported.
1385 Before, MY_EOF was silently renumbered as 257.
1386
1387** doc/refcard.tex is updated.
1388
1389** %output, %file-prefix, %name-prefix.
1390 New.
1391
1392** --output
1393 New, aliasing `--output-file'.
1394\f
1395* Changes in version 1.30, 2001-10-26:
1396
1397** `--defines' and `--graph' have now an optional argument which is the
1398 output file name. `-d' and `-g' do not change; they do not take any
1399 argument.
1400
1401** `%source_extension' and `%header_extension' are removed, failed
1402 experiment.
1403
1404** Portability fixes.
1405\f
1406* Changes in version 1.29, 2001-09-07:
1407
1408** The output file does not define const, as this caused problems when used
1409 with common autoconfiguration schemes. If you still use ancient compilers
1410 that lack const, compile with the equivalent of the C compiler option
1411 `-Dconst='. autoconf's AC_C_CONST macro provides one way to do this.
1412
1413** Added `-g' and `--graph'.
1414
1415** The Bison manual is now distributed under the terms of the GNU FDL.
1416
1417** The input and the output files has automatically a similar extension.
1418
1419** Russian translation added.
1420
1421** NLS support updated; should hopefully be less troublesome.
1422
1423** Added the old Bison reference card.
1424
1425** Added `--locations' and `%locations'.
1426
1427** Added `-S' and `--skeleton'.
1428
1429** `%raw', `-r', `--raw' is disabled.
1430
1431** Special characters are escaped when output. This solves the problems
1432 of the #line lines with path names including backslashes.
1433
1434** New directives.
1435 `%yacc', `%fixed_output_files', `%defines', `%no_parser', `%verbose',
1436 `%debug', `%source_extension' and `%header_extension'.
1437
1438** @$
1439 Automatic location tracking.
1440\f
1441* Changes in version 1.28, 1999-07-06:
1442
1443** Should compile better now with K&R compilers.
1444
1445** Added NLS.
1446
1447** Fixed a problem with escaping the double quote character.
1448
1449** There is now a FAQ.
1450\f
1451* Changes in version 1.27:
1452
1453** The make rule which prevented bison.simple from being created on
1454 some systems has been fixed.
1455\f
1456* Changes in version 1.26:
1457
1458** Bison now uses automake.
1459
1460** New mailing lists: <bug-bison@gnu.org> and <help-bison@gnu.org>.
1461
1462** Token numbers now start at 257 as previously documented, not 258.
1463
1464** Bison honors the TMPDIR environment variable.
1465
1466** A couple of buffer overruns have been fixed.
1467
1468** Problems when closing files should now be reported.
1469
1470** Generated parsers should now work even on operating systems which do
1471 not provide alloca().
1472\f
1473* Changes in version 1.25, 1995-10-16:
1474
1475** Errors in the input grammar are not fatal; Bison keeps reading
1476the grammar file, and reports all the errors found in it.
1477
1478** Tokens can now be specified as multiple-character strings: for
1479example, you could use "<=" for a token which looks like <=, instead
1480of chosing a name like LESSEQ.
1481
1482** The %token_table declaration says to write a table of tokens (names
1483and numbers) into the parser file. The yylex function can use this
1484table to recognize multiple-character string tokens, or for other
1485purposes.
1486
1487** The %no_lines declaration says not to generate any #line preprocessor
1488directives in the parser file.
1489
1490** The %raw declaration says to use internal Bison token numbers, not
1491Yacc-compatible token numbers, when token names are defined as macros.
1492
1493** The --no-parser option produces the parser tables without including
1494the parser engine; a project can now use its own parser engine.
1495The actions go into a separate file called NAME.act, in the form of
1496a switch statement body.
1497\f
1498* Changes in version 1.23:
1499
1500The user can define YYPARSE_PARAM as the name of an argument to be
1501passed into yyparse. The argument should have type void *. It should
1502actually point to an object. Grammar actions can access the variable
1503by casting it to the proper pointer type.
1504
1505Line numbers in output file corrected.
1506\f
1507* Changes in version 1.22:
1508
1509--help option added.
1510\f
1511* Changes in version 1.20:
1512
1513Output file does not redefine const for C++.
1514
1515Local Variables:
1516mode: outline
1517End:
1518
1519-----
1520
1521Copyright (C) 1995-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1522
1523This file is part of Bison, the GNU Parser Generator.
1524
1525This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
1526it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
1527the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
1528(at your option) any later version.
1529
1530This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
1531but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
1532MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
1533GNU General Public License for more details.
1534
1535You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
1536along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.